Bodysurfing through Causeway Bay…

Hong Kong Soccer 7s

The soccer sevens are a very poor brother to the rugby sevens that take place every year in Honkers.

The teams consist of local, Asian and a handful of English teams. There is the main cup which is made of u-19 players and then there is the Masters tournament for the over 35s.

It takes place inside Happy Valley racecourse and the entrance is impossible to find unless you know where you are going (or are a member of Hong Kong FC and in that case you can go through the glorious club house). It is publicised around the island for a quite a while beforehand but obviously not as hyped as the rugby version. This results in pretty low turnouts and short queues for food and drink. Result!

I managed to catch every day of action missing a few hours of non essential games on each day. There was some good action interspersed with games of nothingness and boring unadventurous play.
The final Sunday was a very long day of watching football; and even the most ardent footy fan in me was getting quite weary by the end of it all. The main cup was won by the Celtic u-19 team over Rangers. It wasn’t quite the blood bath I was expecting and obviously these kids haven’t been incited by the 80,000 odd sectarian fanatics at the first team Glasgow derbies yet. I hope they focus on their evident skills and keep up the sportsmanship between these two warring teams that I saw in the entertaining final.

A team full of oldies from the English Premiership. Was excited to see them in action. Shame they were beaten by a bunch of locals!

Will probably go again next year; but maybe just for the last day. Was happy to brush off the old Nikon D70 to snap a few action shots. Still got it!